For students having a hard time finding work for the summer, a new website called Joborilla has been solely designed for your needs.
Joborilla has been running for two weeks and was designed by dentistry students Jason Hoium and Greg Little who ran into difficulty finding work over the summer because the College of Dentistry runs on a longer schedule.
This difficulty prodded the pair to seek out an alternative and create their own job site so that they could control it and fix problems they had experienced with other online job sites.
Hoium remembers how hard the process of creating a website was because neither of them had much experiencing with designing websites.
“Greg did a lot of reading on how to write PHP code and I did the graphics on the website using Photoshop.”
The pair decided to add features such as alerts when a job has been filled or posting jobs for only $10.95 per day to make posting more affordable for businesses. Hoium also talked about the importance of getting employers to be active in the community in terms of helping charities or non-profit organizations.
Hoium and Little felt that through their business model they could keep advertising dollars within Saskatoon through a 10 per cent donation to Saskatoon charities. The pair hope that if the site is successful enough they can make large donations once or twice a year.
“It is a great situation for all involved because job seekers can find local jobs, employers can find local job seekers at a cost of only $10.95 per day for an add and charities in Saskatoon reap the benefits.”
So far the response has been good for the pair.
They have had the backing of the city of Saskatoon and Kelly Services, both of whom are posting jobs on the site. Hoium says that people have appreciated that the site is relatively easy to use and lacks spam and ads that have overtaken some similar sites. The site has also been lucky enough to be advertised on local radio station Rock 102.
Both Hoium and Little hope for more growth once they start their marketing campaign and looking to expand their advertising on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“We hope to establish this site as a place that people in Saskatoon can instinctively go to for finding or posting jobs in the city.”